State Supreme Court refuses to hear case against former LAPD detective convicted of murdering romantic rival

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Attorney Mark Overland, left, and former Los Angeles police detective Stephanie Lazarus, right, sit in Superior Court just before reading of verdict which found Lazarus guilty of first degree murder for the 1986 killing of the wife of her former lover in Los Angeles Superior Court, Thursday March 8, 2012. (AP Photo/Los Angeles Times, Brian van der Brug, Pool/File)

LOS ANGELES >> The California Supreme Court refused Wednesday to hear the case against a former Los Angeles police detective who was convicted of gunning down her ex-lover’s new wife in 1986 at the condominium where the couple lived in Van Nuys.

The state’s highest court denied a defense petition seeking its review of the case against Stephanie Lazarus, an art theft investigator and 25-year Los Angeles Police Department veteran who was convicted in March 2012 of first-degree murder for the Feb. 24, 1986 killing of Sherri Rasmussen.

In a ruling earlier this year upholding Lazarus’ conviction, a three-justice panel from California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal rejected her claim that the delay in bringing charges against her violated her due process rights. The panel also denied the defense’s claims that a lower court should have quashed search warrants used to search her home and computers and that jurors should not have heard a tape of her being interviewed by LAPD detectives before her June 2009 arrest.

Lazarus retired from the LAPD after being arrested by Robbery-Homicide Division detectives at the department’s downtown headquarters, largely as a result of DNA evidence taken from a bite mark on Rasmussen’s left forearm. Los Angeles police detectives had trailed Lazarus to surreptitiously get a DNA sample from her in May 2009 by collecting a drink cup and straw she had thrown in a trash can outside a Costco store.

The appellate court panel noted in its ruling that Lazarus’ DNA profile “precisely matched the profile of the person who bit Rasmussen shortly before her death.”

Lazarus had a “compelling motive to kill Rasmussen” because she had been abruptly dropped by John Ruetten when he met his future wife, and Lazarus had confronted Rasmussen at Glendale Adventist Medical Center, where the 29-year-old woman worked as a nursing supervisor, the justices noted in the 78-page ruling.

Ruetten and Rasmussen were married in November 1985, a few months after Lazarus wrote Ruetten’s mother that she was “truly in love with John,” the appellate court panel noted.

“The evidence of motive and the circumstantial evidence, combined with the presence of appellant’s DNA on a wound inflicted on the victim during her struggles with her assailant, provided convincing evidence of appellant’s guilt,” Associate Justice Nora Manella wrote on behalf of the panel in its ruling.

“Certain facts were largely uncontradicted at trial and were demonstrated through the introduction of evidence whose admission is not challenged on appeal,” Manella wrote, with Acting Presiding Justice Thomas L. Willhite Jr. and Associate Justice Audrey Collins concurring. “Critical among them were: (a) that appellant, deeply in love with Ruetten, was devastated by his decision to marry Rasmussen; (b) that appellant directed her anger not at Ruetten, but at Rasmussen, confronting her at her place of work; and (c) that appellant’s DNA appeared in the saliva of the bite mark inflicted on Rasmussen’s forearm near the time of her murder. These facts alone raise the nearly inescapable inference that appellant confronted, assaulted and murdered Rasmussen.”

Investigators with the LAPD’s Cold Case Unit re-opened the case in 2004 and asked the coroner’s office to locate the bite mark tissue sample, which had been stored in a freezer in an evidence room since 1986, according to the ruling. DNA testing determined that the major profile was from a female, and investigators turned their attention toward specific women who might have had reason to harm Rasmussen, the justices noted.

Lazarus was sentenced in May 2012 to 27 years to life in state prison.

City News Service is a regional wire service covering Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Diego counties. Its reporting and editing staff cover public safety, courts, local government and general assignment stories. Contact the City News Service newsroom at 310-481-0404 or news@socalnews.com.

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